


I'll be Home for Christmas

by animefreak



Category: UFO | Gerry Anderson's UFO
Genre: Christmas, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-29 05:18:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13920204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/animefreak/pseuds/animefreak
Summary: Probably AU, but what if John Straker did not die exactly.





	I'll be Home for Christmas

He walked slowly, as though the process was a foreign one. Perhaps it was the layer of snow on the ground, growing with the fall of soft flakes from the gray sky overhead or perhaps it was just that he didn’t have a destination in mind. He stopped, looking up at the clouds then at the building across the roadway. It was a large building with others spread out around it. He stared until his eyes burned, something here drew him, but he didn’t know what.

Warmth, laughter, a man. He could remember a man, older than he, taller, laughing as they …

The memory broke up as they so often did. Pulling his coat tighter around him, he frowned at the car park surrounding the place. There were very few cars there now, no one moving in the area. Colored lights twinkled in the large windows. The warmth drew him forward, across the roadway. He halted at the edge, carefully checking both ways before starting across. 

Inside a handful of people were gathered in the Harlington-Straker commissary. A tree with all the trimmings stood at one side of the room, gaily wrapped presents waiting under it for the owners to claim them. Conversations about what they’d be doing tomorrow filtered to where one man sat solitary in the back, a plate of food chilling on the table in front of him.

“Ed.”

He looked up, his intense blue gaze meeting the dark eyes of his second in command and best friend. A smile briefly lit his face as he nodded a greeting. “Alec. Merry Christmas.” It was automatic this time of year. Two words that seldom reached him wrapped up as he was in his work.

“Merry Christmas,” Alec responded with warmth. He looked around the room. “It’s been a good year.”

Alec was right. It had been a good year. The number of alien incursions into Earth airspace was smaller than it had been in years. The situation both encouraged the two men and worried them. It was possible that the aliens were getting the message that Earth was no longer an uncontested harvesting ground. The opposition could also be building up for an alternative attack method. Daunting thoughts in a time when a lot of people were centering on the message of Peace on Earth and Good Will to Men.

Ed let a sigh escape him. How long had they been at this? Alec’s hair was becoming grizzled with white. Paul Foster of the hot head and playboy good looks had matured into a leader with excellent qualities. His own hair had changed from white blond to mostly white. He lifted his coffee cup in a toast. 

“A very good year.”

No one noticed the door to the room push open and the young man step in. His eyes searched the area. It was here. He was here. The man was certain of it. For just a moment his eyes met Straker’s as they swept the area again. The darkness swept in as he reached for the older man.

“Doctor.”

Helen Jamison, MD, specialist in coma patients, looked up from her computer to see one of her nurses standing in the door to her office. “Yes?”

“It’s happened again.”

She looked at her watch. Two pm Christmas Eve. With a nod she rose from her seat and followed him down the corridor to one of the rooms. Monitors beeped quietly keeping track of the life signs of a patient. Blond, thin, comatose for fifteen years due to a massive infection incurred after an accident, the young man breathed on his own, but that was all.

Except for once a year. Christmas Eve. She knew the eyes beneath the fragile blue veined lids were a startling blue. Right now, they were moving in REM. A smile curved the patient’s lips, then faded and everything returned to normal. 

“How long?” Dr. Jamison asked.

“Five minutes,” the nurse told her, checking the monitors. “Five minutes this year.” He raised his eyes to the doctor. “A little more each year.”

“Five minutes of brain activity isn’t much,” she reminded him. But it was so much more than the normal fleeting thirty seconds. What was he dreaming about? What was so important that it kept him bound here?

At Harlington-Straker, Ed Straker passed through the doorway where the young man had stood. Melting snow puddled in the doorway, yet a feeling of warmth enveloped him. He paused in the warmth, memories flooding him, catching his breath in his throat and the long forgotten scents of soap and dirt and a child’s laughter touched him.

I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.


End file.
